Fleet News Award winner: Customer Service Award - Ogilvie

To describe Ogilvie as a diverse business would be a serious understatement. Construction, property and communications are all well established and successful arms of the Stirling-based company.

And this gave Gordon Stephen a major headache. The managing director of Ogilvie Fleet initially struggled to raise the profile of the contract hire and leasing division.

“We have always had a good story to tell but nobody really knew,” says Stephen.

“Even in Scotland we weren’t very well known. We have been working really hard over the past couple of years to raise our profile, and winning awards really helps to do this.”

This year’s Fleet News Awards customer service winner, Ogilvie Fleet has introduced a range of initiatives to enhance its overall customer experience.

It has also earned recognition for its customer service in the annual Fleeteye CSI survey, demonstrating that a personal touch and commitment to customer satisfaction is key to not only winning new business, but keeping it too.

Fleet News: You launched a number of new IT initiatives throughout 2011. How do you plan to stay ahead as technology continues to develop at such a fast pace?

Gordon Stephen: It’s an evolution. Technology is constantly moving forwards and if you get yourselves near the front, as we believe we have done, it becomes about continually evolving and keeping pace.

We speak to customers all the time and ask them what technology they would like to see.

We have invested heavily in IT and online services, but most importantly we are a bespoke service. We tailor our offering for what a customer wants and needs.

If they don’t want any reporting and they want a one-on-one conversation with an area manager, they can have that too. We don’t force technology down people’s throats.

FN: Leasing companies generally offer very similar services to each other. What do you think makes Ogilvie Fleet stand out?

GS: Everyone at Ogilvie Fleet is very customer focused and winning the Fleet News Award proves this. No other company won this award this year and it has probably opened the door to some new customers.

Leasing companies do offer similar services and it’s getting harder and harder to stand out. Once someone gets a good idea, the other leasing companies follow suit.

The one thing we have always excelled at is our service and that helps differentiate us.

Customers really like having a dedicated person to deal with, so if they are speaking to the same member of staff then that is great.

Every customer is different and having a closer relationship with them allows you to make the service much more personal.

Also, our staff turnover is minimal and it would be unusual for us to lose anyone – we have had the same people working here for more than 10 years.

Consistency of service and making the whole process as easy as possible is also key to winning new business.

In most cases in our target market – companies with 50-250 vehicles – don’t have a fleet manager so it’s usually someone in HR or finance that has to deal with the fleet as part of their everyday role.

If we can take some of the management and planning away, then it means a lot to them.

FN: Customer service is very important, but how do you stay competitive when it comes to pricing?

GS: Pricing is a key challenge: the market is probably as competitive as I have known it. Our sales team says there is some aggressive pricing in the market at the moment.

However, we are not in the market to cut our prices. We have trimmed our margin back a certain extent, but some of the deals out there are impossible for us to match.

Funding has also been a real issue for us over the past few years.

The major funders in our market, Lloyds and Bank of Scotland, merged and then Alliance and Leicester pulled out of the sector, so it started to get worrying that there wasn’t going to be enough funding available.

The more funding available to us, the more we can drive down the interest rates and become more competitive with our pricing.

We will never be the cheapest, but some customers are happy to pay more for service. If you sell on price then I think you have nowhere to go.

FN: As salary sacrifice continues to grow in popularity, are you considering branching out?

GS: We are talking to customers about it and we have a product which is still in development.

Salary sacrifice is untapped business. You are generating incremental business out of nothing, so it is quite an exciting area for us with lots of potential.

Salary sacrifice schemes are also an effective tool in reducing fleet CO2 emissions.

FN: How important, in your opinion, is it for fleets to use a wholelife cost model?

GS: When we go and see a customer for the very first time, we always talk about wholelife costs.

Some customers still look only at rental and purchasing prices, but not including fuel is a big mistake.

Getting customers to look at wholelife costs is an educational process.

We try to recommend to the customer what is best for them and I genuinely believe a wholelife cost model is the way forward.

Our wholelife cost calculator holds a lot of information and brings everything into consideration. Trying to get people to change is not easy, especially if that is the way they have always done things.

We have been pretty successful in converting customers to a wholelife cost model. If you are really looking at the cost of the vehicle, you need to do it on a wholelife cost basis.

If not, then you are missing something and a customer could have drivers costing them far more money than they expect.

FN: Your fleet of 10,350 vehicles means you sit at position 19 in the 2012 FN50. Are there any plans to grow further?

GS: If we can get more competitive funding then we would like to win business from bigger companies. We would like to grow our fleet and our next goal is 15,000 vehicles, which we will aim to do as quickly as we can without being silly.

We don’t know what’s round the corner. Yes, we want to grow, but only at a profit.

If you grow too quickly, you can lose money.

My boss, Duncan Ogilvie, would much rather we stay at 10,000 vehicles and continue to grow our profits then extend the fleet to 15,000 vehicles and lose out. If there is an opportunity for us to grow profitably then we will.

Looking towards 2013, Ogilvie Fleet is focusing on profitable growth, continuing to raise its profile and continuing to deliver the customer service that won it the Fleet News award this year.

“Our job is to give them a service at a competitive price,” says Stephen. “We cannot let our service slip, if it slips, we lose everything.”

Ogilvie is planning to deliver more services online including enhancements to the Mifleet Showroom and gaining more feedback from customers looking at how they rate both Ogilvie Fleet and other services that are outsourced to ensure the customers are getting the best service possible.

Stephen has also set his sights high for next year’s Fleet News Awards, submitting an entry for Leasing Company of the Year.